Do you suspect your e-commerce order fulfillment process of failing? Check for these four telltale signs— if you’ve observed more than one of them, it may be time to switch providers.
4 Signs Your e-Commerce Order Fulfillment Is Failing
Shipping & Storage Pricing Issues
You may not think of shipping and storage pricing issues as a factor that can affect your customers and flow of business, but they can actually cause you to lose out on business sometimes. Carriers increase their rates annually, but if you’ve partnered with a large fulfillment company, it should have access to discounted, high-volume shipping rates. If your current shipping rates don’t allow you to provide free or even low-cost shipping to customer, you’re probably losing a ton of customers.
Rise in Customer Complaints about Fulfillment
A flood of negative reviews and complaints of incorrect orders and damaged deliveries can be another sign that your e-commerce fulfillment services are failing. Best-in-class fulfillment providers have an industry average of 99.94% picking accuracy—a small number of errors are inevitable, but there’s no reason your rate of damages and errors should be negligible or experience dramatic increases during peak times. After receiving an incorrect order, 29% of customers will never buy from an online merchant again. If your rate of incorrect orders or damaged shipments are above average, it might be a sign that your e-commerce fulfillment provider doesn’t gave the technology or infrastructure needed to maintain order accuracy and could result in you losing customers.
Failure in Timely Order Delivery
Consumers expect fast shipping now more than ever, which means that your e-commerce fulfillment process needs to be as efficient as possible. The delivery date provided to the customer when their order was placed should either be met or beaten with an early deliver. Failing to meet customer order turn-around times could result in huge losses in revenue, as shipping speed has much to do with whether a customer decides to give you their repeat business. It’s up to your e-commerce fulfillment service to get orders out the door as quickly as possible, and make sure that delivery times are as short as possible—guaranteed delivery times will ensure happy customers!
Administrative Errors
Administrative errors are usually the most common and, unfortunately, the most harmful in some cases. Without paying close attention to detail and keeping accurate, up-to-date inventory management, administrative errors can become painstakingly easy to make. Once a mistake of this nature is made, it can be hard to fix—and even if you manage to fix it, sometimes your brand reputation is compromised beyond repair. Examples of common admin errors include: items listed as available but out of stock after placing an order, wrong items shipped, incorrect quantities added to order, or inaccurate product weight or dimensions. Any one of these errors can signify failure in your e-commerce order fulfillment and deteriorate your brand’s reputation.
APS Fulfillment, Inc. is a full-service e-commerce fulfillment company, based in Miami, Florida. We offer small- and large-scale businesses simple fulfillment platforms as well as a wide array of warehousing and delivery solutions. With the ability to fulfill customer orders quickly and accurately, we empower clients with affordable and professional online ordering, and warehousing services. To learn more about our services and how we can help grow your business, call us at (954) 582-7450.
